


Share Your Road

by dawnstruck



Series: Hopeless Wanderer [4]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character Study, Codependency, Emotional Manipulation, M/M, Mindfuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-12
Updated: 2015-11-12
Packaged: 2018-05-01 07:04:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5196704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dawnstruck/pseuds/dawnstruck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You reap what you sow.<br/>Naruto offers bountiful harvest.</p><p>The most important stories can never quite be put into words and maybe that is their true tragedy.<br/>[Clouded Mind and Heavy Heart from Naruto's POV]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Share Your Road

**Author's Note:**

> Wow wow wow. It has been just over twelve months now since I got back into Naruto and anime in general and let's such say that I've had a great time, fanfiction-wise.  
> Exactly one year ago I published Clouded Mind and Heavy Heart which somehow spawned this whole Hopeless Wanderer series. Especially Hope's on Fire got so much feedback that I was totally not expecting. From the very beginning, many of you have been asking for to get a little insight on Naruto's thoughts on his relationship with Sasuke - and finally I can deliver an answer!  
> As with most of my stories I only start out with a general concept and some more specific ideas and then just let the characters develop their own life. This is what happened here, too. Beware of the Mindfuck.
> 
> Since this mostly parallels the events described in Clouded Mind and Heavy Heart you might want to skim that one again to refresh your memory!

“ _So leave that click in my head_

_And I will remember the words that you said_

_Left a clouded mind and a heavy heart_

_But I was sure we could see a new start”_

Mumford and Sons ~ Hopeless Wanderer

 

He is so used to the name calling, so used to insults, to voices loud or low, the constant cacophony of his life, no matter where he goes. He's never truly alone for the sneers and stares follow him home, even as he hides himself in his bed, buried under a pile of blankets.

Bakemono, they call him. Monster.

Sometimes he almost forgets that he actually has a real name, a given name and a family name, orphaned though he may be.

“Uzumaki Naruto,” Iruka-sensei checks the attendance list every morning, and every morning he jumps up and waves and yells, “That's me, that's me, you better believe it!”

Iruka-sensei sighs and ticks him off the list while the other kids just roll their eyes in annoyance, muttering, “Baka, baka, what an idiot.”

Naruto just sits back down and smiles.

Baka is definitely preferable to bakemono.

 

The pretty girl's name is Sakura. When he tells her he thinks she is pretty, she blushes with fury and embarrassment and stammers out that she is in love with Sasuke-kun.

That's how he finds out that the lonely boy's name is Sasuke, and he turns the name over and over in his mind, in his mouth, until it feels at home there, going from foreign to familiar.

Hey, Sasuke, he imagines himself saying, Wanna play, wanna train, wanna eat ramen?

He never does say it, though, even when they are put into the same class, _especially_ when they are put in the same class.

He still sees Sasuke sitting by the lake, and he watches, thinking that if his voice would just cooperate, if-

Sometimes Sasuke catches him staring, and a blush rises hot and high on Naruto's cheeks, so he glares instead, and Sasuke glares back, because Naruto is an idiot and Sasuke showed him up in shuriken practice today, and that's all there is to it.

Eventually Naruto wanders off, hands in his pockets, and the curious suspicion that Sasuke might be hiding a smile, too.

 

He's put onto the same team as Sasuke and Sakura-chan, and his stomach is roiling with excitement.

He's a ninja now, he can become Hokage now, but more than that he has a sensei now, he has teammates, and maybe someday soon he will even have friends.

“Wanna play?” he practices saying in front of his tiny bathroom mirror, “Wanna train, wanna eat ramen?”

 

Naruto is tied to a pole, rope digging into his skin, not an inch of leeway.

He's failed the test, he's going to be sent back to the academy, he's lost his team after barely a day of being part of it. He feels like crying, but instead he focuses on how he is going nauseous with hunger, how Kakashi-sensei has wandered off while Sakura and Sasuke are eating right in front of him, not even sparing him a glance.

Finally, his stomach growls so loudly that even the others can't ignore it.

“Here,” Sasuke just sighs in exasperation and offers him his half-eaten bento. After a moment's hesitation, Sakura does the same.

But Naruto is still bound, can't hold the chopsticks, so with another sigh Sasuke just starts feeding him.

And Naruto tries to act all cross and huffy, because he's seen baby birds being fed like this and he is not a baby, Sasuke doesn't need to take care of him.

In the back of his mind, he is aware that Sasuke is risking it all here. Because Kakashi-sensei had said he'd fail them, too, if they helped Naruto, but Sasuke is doing it anyway, his gaze fixed on the bento as though unable to look Naruto in the eye.

Naruto wonders whether he could have done the same, whether he would have risked all his dreams, only to give Sasuke a little bit of respite, and realizes that, yes, yes, he would, a thousand times over.

 

In the end, Kakashi returns with a surprise. Sasuke and Sakura don't fail. Neither does Naruto.

They are Team 7 now and Sasuke cuts him loose from the ropes, mumbling a gruff “See you tomorrow” before he wanders off alone.

Yes, Naruto thinks. Tomorrow and the day after that and forever and always. Yes.

 

“Dobe,” Sasuke calls him, long and drawn out, in something Naruto likes to think of as fond exasperation.

“Usuaratonkachi,” Sasuke says, every syllable pointed like a little song as he dances out of reach during training, endlessly teasing.

And they are insults, for all intents and purposes, they should make Naruto angry. But no one else gets called any special names, even Kakashi and Sakura are just that, no sensei or chan included.

But Naruto is special in this way, special in how he is given names and looks that no other person seems to understand.

“Wanna train, wanna eat ramen?” he asks Sakura, keeping an eye on Sasuke who frowns and mocks, “You'll never grow any taller like that.”

He does this always, doesn't he, makes some throw-away comment whenever Naruto tries to talk to someone else. And Naruto wonders at that, wonders why it captures his attention every single time.

Eventually, whenever he is about to talk to someone, he immediately looks towards Sasuke first.

And Sasuke, to his never-ending surprise, his indefinite pleasure, is always already looking back.

 

Sasuke... starts asking questions. Uncomfortable questions, questions Naruto doesn't have answers to or, even worse, answers he knows all too well.

“It's none of your business,” he objects, shoulders hunched up and still feeling so, so small.

“It is,” Sasuke says and hesitates before laying a gentle hand on him, “It is my business because I don't want to fight for a village that would just abandon my best friend.”

Of all the names Naruto has been called, this is the most difficult to figure out.

 

There is a look, sometimes, in Sasuke's eyes. It's shrouded and calculating and all too dark.

“They are keeping secrets from me,” he hisses as though mostly talking to himself, and with 'they' he means Kaka-sensei and late Sandaime-sama and the whole of Konoha, “I just know it, there has to be something, my clan, my family, my brother, it just doesn't add up, it doesn't make sense-”

Yes, Naruto thinks and clutches a helpless hand over his stomach. He knows what secrets feel like, knows how they eat away at you from both outside and inside, how they devour you until there is little truth left of you. And how sometimes it was easier to bare your teeth and threaten to bite as well.

 

He had known that Sasuke was desperate. Had know that he was barely six feet from the edge.

He knows that feeling all too well. Knows how easy it would be to give in to the temptation, to satisfy that thirst for vengeance, for twisted justice.

They face each other at what Naruto later comes to learn is called the Valley of the End, standing in the shadow of two great warriors whose friendship dissolved into fights. There are epic poems written about them nowadays, about their rivalry, their victories and failures, but no one understands the full extent of what they were to each other. The most important stories can never quite be put into words and maybe that is their true tragedy.

There are choices now and manifold outcomes.

They can fight and kill each other. Fight and have Naruto win, drag Sasuke back to Konoha. Fight and have Sasuke win, maybe kill Naruto, maybe not, maybe forever wondering why he didn't.

They can give up. Sasuke on his oath to grow stronger and avenge his clan. Naruto on his oath to grow stronger and save Sasuke. They can give up on each other.

They can talk. Rail and shout and beg and plead. Slither words like snakes into each others' minds. They can wait and see whose cause is more convincing.

There are choices now. Naruto lets Sasuke make the call.

“You promised me that you'd never give up on your friends,” Sasuke says and his gaze is black and endless, “Aren't we friends, Naruto?”

“We are,” Naruto agrees and makes a choice of his own.

 

The heavy rain plasters his hair to his face, runs down his cheeks like the tears he refuses to shed.

His forehead feels naked without his hitai-ate, but when he looks to his side Sasuke is there, and his heart feels incredibly full.

 

Life is different on the road, on the run.

You learn each other in ways that weren't there before, not like this.

And Naruto is used to being alone, but never alone with another person. Before, Kakashi and Sakura had always been around on missions and Naruto had believed that their presence was what made them a team.

Now he realizes that there is more to being a team.

Kakashi had tried to be a shepherding dog to a flock of sheep, expecting lambs to grow into wolves under his tutelage. Sakura had hoped that if she willingly depended on others, they would depend on her, too.

Sasuke glances over his shoulder and never seems surprised to see that he is still there. He just looks him up and down, narrows his eyes a little, and sometimes, when Naruto is feeling particularly exhausted, he will call for a rest soon after.

Is that team, Naruto muses, thinking of the shinobi he has seen spar, how they urge each other to fight harder, go faster. Or is that family?

 

Sasuke, Naruto understands very quickly, demands not obedience but companionship.

Naruto does not consider himself dead weight, but there is no doubt that Sasuke would be able to progress much easier on his own, move faster and less conspicuously.

There is also the fact that while Konoha will have a vested interest to get their last Uchiha back, they will be much more concerned with losing their jinjuuriki. Naruto's worth has always been measured for that which is not really him, so he does not delude himself into believing otherwise.

But in-between his quest to find information on his brother, to learn new jutsu, to evade those who might be out to get them, Sasuke goes out of his way to treat Naruto to some ramen, to spend the day at the onsen, to stay at an inn that is a bit out of their price range.

Naruto has learned to see through the henge they use, and underneath it Sasuke looks surprisingly young as he relaxes into the hot water. Naruto has also learned that everything Sasuke says is a double-edged kunai and that if you are too slow to dodge you still have to try and throw something back.

 

They go by aliases when they are among people, fixed personas that they sometimes spend hours thinking up.

There are Jenji and Junichi who are friends from the same village, always looking for employment, for an apprenticeship, for a roof over their heads. Michio and Tadashi, brothers who have lost their family and are hoping to settle down somewhere. Takeshi, son of a nobleman, and Nao his steadfast servant.

Sometimes they switch it up and Naruto creates some shadow clones so they can travel in a larger group to throw their pursuers off-track, but he prefers it if it's just them, when people look at them and agree that they really squabble like brothers, that they must be childhood friends for the trust they put in each other, that Takeshi lets Nao gets away with quite a few mistakes.

Undercover missions had never been Naruto's strong suit, but this is not something where he feels like he has to act. It comes naturally, the way he always marks Sasuke's presence in a room, how they glance at each other before answering a question.

In the first weeks and months, he had relished in the opportunity to talk to other people, though strangers they might be, enjoyed playing with little children like he had never been allowed to before, eagerly chatted with old ladies who fed them soup. He had never had any of that in Konoha, never had people smile at him when he smiled at them first.

He hasn't been kicked out of a shop in ages, hasn't had whispers following him around since they left the village. The world is an adventure, opening its arms and welcoming him.

“Would you like seconds, Junichi-kun?” Eiko-baa-chan asks guilelessly and Naruto startles.

No, he realizes. The world does not welcome him. This old woman would not have invited him into her home had she known what dark secret he carried at the depths of him.

“Yes, please,” he tells her with a grin and holds out his empty bowl.

“Good night, Jenji,” he whispers that evening when winter is almost upon them and they are bundled up on Eiko-baa-chan's floor. She is already fast asleep, but he is mindful to uphold their facade.

“Night, Naruto,” Sasuke whispers back and Naruto stares up into the dark for a long, long time after that.

  
  


It's not like Naruto never thinks of home, though sometimes he feels he only calls it that because they have nothing else to return to.

So home it is with all its fond and hideous memories.

He thinks of Sandaime-jii-san who is dead and Tsunade-baa-chan who's probably disappointed in him. Of Sakura-chan who maybe cried over both him and Sasuke, and Kakashi-sensei who had always seemed too tough and careless to cry over anyone. He thinks of Ero Sennin who might be looking for clues to find him, but will be distracted by spying on naked women. Of Iruka-sensei who always has new classes to teach, who will find some other orphaned kid who is not somehow responsible for killing Iruka-sensei's parents.

He thinks of Neji, too, and Gaara, of fighting and defeating and kind of befriending them. Thinks of hanging out with Shikamaru and Chouji and Kiba, but never daring more than that. Thinks of Lee and Hinata-chan and how they sometimes looked at Naruto with admiration in their eyes.

He had wanted more of those looks, of those victories, had wanted to be strong for them and for himself, had wanted to be Hokage to take care of people, or maybe just so that his face would be carved into the mountain and no one would hiss his name like a curse anymore, except for his deadliest enemies who were terribly afraid of him.

“Give me your hand,” Sasuke tells him when he has burned himself on the pot in which he is boiling snow into tea. Naruto shrugs, pulls away.

“It'll heal,” he knows.

Sasuke purses his lips, grabs his wrist, carefully examines the burn.

“Doesn't mean it doesn't hurt right now,” he says and dabs some cooling salve onto the reddened skin.

  
  


Naruto... doesn't quite trust Sasuke. Doesn't trust him in the way you know a wild animal won't bite you only for as long as you continue to feed it.

So Naruto feeds it.

 

“Sasuke,” Naruto calls out, aware that the other must still be awake, if barely, “Sasuke, I'm cold.”

“Join the club,” Sasuke's voice grumbles out of the dark of their cabin.

“I can't sleep if I'm cold,” Naruto complains and waits for the answering sigh.

“Come here then,” Sasuke says at length and this is just what Naruto has been waiting for, so he jumps up and drags his futon and blankets over to where he suspects Sasuke must be.

“Watch where you're going, idiot,” Sasuke hisses when Naruto accidentally kicks him.

“I can't, it's dark,” Naruto snorts, but then he is already settling down again, closer, much closer than either he or Sasuke could have anticipated.

Neither of them pulls back, though, and Naruto doesn't know whether that's stubbornness or starvation.

 

Naruto had always thought that his life couldn't get any more complicated, but then it always did.

Within a month of finding out that the Yondaime Hokage, the man he had always idolized, was actually his father, he hears the news about Gaara's death.

Whether kage or jinjuuriki, you always end up dead and alone.

Not alone, Naruto thinks when Sasuke hugs him close that night. Never alone, never that, never abandoned, never lonely, never forgotten, never-

 

Sakura is even prettier than he remembers her, or maybe that is just the way her eyes look at him so searchingly, so desperately.

Back when they were younger, she had often been annoyed by his antics, disgusted by his eating habits. Sometime she had giggled, coyly behind her hand, had seized him up as an opponent when they were about to spar, had stuck out her tongue and hopped away when she bested him at something.

She could have been his friend, his teammate, he thinks and gets momentarily lost in the fantasy of it. He had thought he loved her back then and the idea of that is still there, the thought of being able to hold someone late at night, to kiss them and whisper sweet words without feeling silly about it, like he has seen people in movies do.

Is she here because of that now, because she misses him, because maybe she loved him all along, because Konoha could still be his home?”

“Naruto,” Sasuke says quietly, and Naruto remembers that he already has a friend.

 

When he wakes, he feels tender, his hardened skin and armor burned away by just a few minutes of battle.

But Sasuke is there, has bathed and bandaged him, is sitting by his bedside, watching, waiting.

“You alright?” he asks and Naruto wonders why he could ever have wanted someone else.

 

Later, he blinks awake with a familiar hand on his shoulder, grumbles unhappily because he is still exhausted, but when he looks up he finds Sasuke looking at him, intent, intense.

Naruto opens his mouth to say something but before words even form in his mind, there are warm lips pressed against his.

A kiss, he knows, because he has seen parents kiss children, husbands kiss wives. Do friends kiss? Sasuke and Naruto certainly haven't and-

There is a tongue swiping into Naruto's mouth and he doesn't think it should feel as good as it does, but his head falls back on instinct, giving Sasuke better access because he doesn't quite know what else to do.

There is no urgency in it like it had been in that scene of Ero Sennin's novel that Naruto had once curiously peeked at. But it's not casual either, not fleeting like goodbye kisses spouses bestow upon each other when they part ways in the morning.

Sasuke and Naruto just lie there, in the dark, shaken as they are from the day's fight, gravitating closer and kissing and kissing, like there is no end to it. And maybe there won't be.

 

The kissing becomes a regular thing now. It fits seamlessly into their routine because they are already always up in each others' space anyway.

Naruto steals a kiss when Sasuke is waiting for the rice to cook or when Sasuke is staring down at a map, just to see that severe frown melt away. But better still are the times when they are sparring, reaching that point where they are just mindlessly rolling through the dirt, until Sasuke will suddenly give him that look, drop all his weapons, and descend onto Naruto like a flood wave.

And Naruto is a man dying of thirst, trying to quench it by swallowing the ocean whole, only to find himself needing more and more still.

 

Sasuke's body is warm and steady against Naruto's side while Kakashi, Sakuara, Hinata and Shikamaru are poised for battle across from them.

“You'll stop at nothing, will you,” Kakashi says. The lines around his eyes are deep, but the look in them is flat, empty, as though they have seen one terrible thing too many.

“Sasuke-kun,” Sakura says and she sounds choked, but inexplicably angry, “You are disgusting.”

Oh, Naruto realizes, wondering how they suddenly know, just by Sasuke's hold on him. It doesn't feel like there is much of a difference to what they were before. This is just a new horizon of the same sky.

“Disgusting?” Sasuke echoes and his fingers clench in Naruto's shirt, “For falling in love?”

Naruto's breath catches.

He has always believed in the power of words, has felt the blow of insults like punches raining down on him, but he's never thought that a single word would leave him so helpless.

I love ramen, he used to say with conviction, I love training. But he loved popsicles, too, and sleeping and star gazing, so maybe he didn't really love any of those things.

He had once thought he loved Sakura, but when he looks at her now he feels bewildered. So he turns towards Sasuke instead.

“Sasuke?” he asks in a whisper because for once his voice does not quite dare to touch that name, but Sasuke is already looking back at him.

He's got that smile on his lips now, the one that is not all real, but not all unreal either, the one that looks small and blunt but has a sharpness to it that Sasuke might as well end up cutting himself on.

“Usuratonkachi,” he replies and ten years of whatever it is they have between them are summed up in that one word, in that teasing tone.

When Sasuke kisses him Naruto is distantly aware of how it is just for show, how Sasuke wants to prove something to the other Konoha nin, but in that moment he doesn't even care about that, caught up in the thought of what it might as well be.

Sasuke doesn't know it yet and Naruto doesn't quite either, yet this is finally the point of no return.

 

They have sex and that is something that Naruto has only really started thinking about lately.

He had been aware of certain things, of course, of why Ero Sennin's books sold so well and why Oiroke no Jutsu never failed.

People are driven by their instincts, after all, and this is just an extension of that.

Is it instinct that a heat spreads from Naruto's belly to his very fingertips, engulfing him, consuming him like the Kyuubi's chakra, but leaving no pain in its wake, no burned skin? Instead Sasuke's touches tantalize across his body in places that Naruto had not known could bring pleasure.

He's been learning so much since he left Konoha, not just secrets and jutsu and kata, but these things, too, these things he had been yearning for without ever even suspecting it. As a child he had not known that a single smile could leech all the loneliness from his world, that an embrace held off the night for reasons other than the warmth of another body.

He had not known, but now he does. He is seeing now, he is illuminated, so he keeps his eyes open, keeps them open as Sasuke gently bites along his collarbone, as Sasuke kisses him with teeth and tongue, as Sasuke enters him.

He etches the sight of Sasuke's face into his retinas, his memories. Sasuke's cheekbones flickering with the flames of their campfire, Sasuke's jaw clenching with each thrust, Sasuke's dark dark eyes that stare back, bottomless and unfathomable, but awake and watching.

Because Sasuke is always watching, always waiting for him, always calling his name and-

“Koibito,” Sasuke whispers and it's a newborn name, frail like a cherry blossom that falls from his lips as he moans quietly, barely even a word, barely a conscious thing, but Naruto hears it anyway, because Sasuke calls.

And Naruto comes.

 

Afterwards, it is very quiet.

Their fire has burned down, only the embers still gleaming tenaciously in the dark.

Sasuke is silent and asleep, completely unguarded. The night is one thing he has never been afraid of. Naruto is another.

Naruto leaves his skin bared to the growing cold, letting it prickle across his nipples, his spread thighs. He reaches between his legs and finds the traces there, sticky and wet.

He does not feel any different, really, does not feel more mature or less innocent or _broken_. And yet.

There had been another person within him. Someone had been willing to touch him so deeply, so intimately, and it had been Sasuke. Sasuke filled him to the brim and even now Naruto does not feel empty.

He wants more of this, he knows, wants to find out what Sasuke tastes like, what he sounds like, how he likes to be touched, how he loses his tenuous control. And Naruto can do that, can pick him apart very tenderly until Sasuke no longer remembers at which point he had started to forget.

Yes, Naruto thinks and pushes a finger into himself, feels the evidence of Sasuke's essence, pushes deeper. _Yes_.

A shame, a voice growls within his head and large eyes gleam behind their prison bars, What has the son of the great Yondaime Hokage come to?

I've come to love, Naruto replies and the putrid water is low around his ankles.

Love, the fox jeers with its smirk all sharp and dangerous, Neither of you know what love even is. This is sickness, this is hunger, this is desire that will devour you, will swallow you whole. You think he is your beginning but he is your end.

He is my all, Naruto says and it is a cruel truth, a comforting one, and the Kyuubi stares at him and knows it, knows everything about him and does not object.

Fool, it whispers, pushing him out of his head and into Sasuke's arms again, You gentle fool.

Naruto eyes fly open, take in the starry sky above, his lips part and he breathes freely. Sasuke is still sleeping, soft and warm beside him.

Bastard, Naruto thinks and smiles to himself.

Sasuke wants to be steel, but he is glass, he is crystal. He shatters when he is held too tightly, when someone lets him fall. Naruto holds up his bare palm and knows that if he ever were to destroy Sasuke he would only end up cutting himself, and there are some injuries that even the Kyuubi cannot heal.

Would he stop me if I tried to leave, Naruto wonders, absent-mindedly staring at Sasuke's still face, young and pale and innocent, Would he kill me?

The question, of course, is meaningless.

Naruto will never leave.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Soo curious what you think of this. Did you expect this of Naruto? Do you really think any of this qualifies as love? Does it make their relationship better or worse?
> 
> Also, while I'm still working on an installment from Sakura's POV, I've got sort of 5+1 story for this series which depicts the relationship from other people's views. Anyone interested?

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic of] Share Your Road](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11900973) by [Dr_Fumbles_McStupid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dr_Fumbles_McStupid/pseuds/Dr_Fumbles_McStupid)




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